Me: And my UAI is…wow.

Mum: What is it?

Me: Almost ninety-five.

Mum: Well that can’t be right!

Dad: Maybe you should give the Board of Studies a call?

Not my work

By far, the worst job I ever had was during the summer when I was twenty-one. I’d returned from South Africa early after a failed attempt at voluntary work (I like money) and couldn’t resume my old job for another 4-5 months because there wasn’t yet any work for me to do there. For the first time in seven years, I was unemployed.

I played nintendo for a few weeks, drank a lot of beer, and sunbaked all day in my parents’ backyard before my mother told me I should think about contributing to society.

“I’m an organ donor,” I reminded her.

“No, I mean you should get a job,” Mum said. “Pay some taxes.”

“You don’t,” I argued.

“Not according to your father’s accountant.”

“Fine, I’ll get a job.”

And after a few interviews with recruiters, I eventually landed a temp-to-perm position doing accounts payable in North Sydney….for a funeral home.

“Is the nature of the business going to be a problem for you?” I was asked during the interview.

“Bills is bills,” I said nonchalantly. “Besides, I like the quiet.”

However, unlike an episode of Six Feet Under, this job proved to be less fascinating than you might think. I was primarily trained by a balding middle-aged man who smelled funny and breathed heavily, which meant I could never have any sort of meaningful professional relationship with him. The hours were 7:30am to 4:30pm, which meant I had to drive in because the buses didn’t start until 8am. And so, every day, I parked my car illegally, and every second day, I got a parking ticket. The residents in North Sydney were clearly sick of the parking situation, because they often abused me. One morning, a lady drove out of her driveway, then told me I had parked too close to it.

“You just drove out of it,” I pointed out.

“I hope you get a ticket!” she said.

“Okay, thanks.”

“Fuck you!” she said and drove off.

At work, I spent my days coding and entering invoices for flowers, catering, burial plots and children’s coffins. I could tell you how much it cost to cremate an adult, an adolescent or a baby; what flowers were most popular; and which funeral celebrants were well-respected. I spent all day looking at names of dead people, and every time I saw a surname I recognised, I had to stop and google them to make sure they weren’t related to somebody I knew.

My co-workers were mostly Asian mothers. Our boss was Cruella de Vil. On my first day, she showed me the depressingly small kitchen. I opened the fridge and noted a complete absence of alcohol.

“You can have a biscuit from the jar, if you like,” she offered. “It’s free.”

“Sure,” I said, knowing that I would eat as many biscuits as possible to compensate myself for working in such a soul-sucking hell hole.

I spent every lunch break chain-smoking in a park around the corner, calling everyone I’d ever met and asking them if they knew of any jobs going. Eventually I found a temporary position doing admin at a friend’s office. I went over for an interview and drank a beer with the CEO, who was wearing board shorts and thongs. We chatted casually for fifteen minutes and he asked me when I could start.

The next day, I quit the funeral home.

“This is awfully short notice,” Cruella protested, “I have no idea how we’ll cope with the workload.”

“Oh I didn’t really do much,” I said, comfortingly.

“This puts us in an awkward position,” she continued.

“Who cares,” I replied. “All your clients are already dead.”

I never got offered anymore work through that particular recruitment agency and I haven’t been to North Sydney since.

Some of you will know who was involved in the events below. Please do leave a comment and feel free to ask questions, but I would appreciate it if no names were mentioned, in order to protect the innocent (and the guilty.)

I was having drinks with an old friend when the subject of my particularly heinous ex came up.

“You need to be smarter,” he advised as I wrapped up the latest update.

“Fuck off,” I replied. “It’s not as if these guys come with a big tag saying DOUCHEBAG. You can’t pick them.”

“Yes, you can,” he insisted. “Well I can, anyway.”

All men think this. They have absolute faith in their ability to spot an arsehole, presumably because they’ve been one themselves at some stage.

“Go on,” I said.

“Okay. So if a guy has a popped collar – he’s a douchebag. And if he’s got the southern cross tattooed anywhere on his body, I won’t even speak to him. Also, bleached hair is a huge indicator of fuckwittage.”

“But my ex didn’t have any of that stuff,” I protested. “Then again, he wasn’t a conventional douchebag. He was actually…evil.”

“Yeah, yeah, all men are scum,” my friend said, and waved his hand dismissively.

I opened my mouth to argue, but found myself at a familiar loss. I’d already had this conversation with various people over the past few months – with both men and women – but I was still struggling to find a way to explain exactly what went on in my relationship.

In a nutshell: I chose to be with an emotionally abusive, lying, manipulative cunt, for nearly two years.

Did I know it at the time? Yes. Was I able to walk away from the relationship? No. How did it actually happen? I’m not sure.

I’m a reasonably well-balanced individual. I’m relatively smart. And ordinarily, I’ve got a pretty healthy sense of self-esteem. But over the years I was with this guy, he took all the parts of my brain that made me normal and systematically destroyed them. By the second year, I was a mess. I couldn’t concentrate at work, I didn’t sleep, I was 8kg below my normal weight, I took too many drugs, I drank too much, I had no interest in my friends, and I lived in a perpetual state of fear and intense anxiety.

It started slowly… A few comments about my weight, my make up, my dress sense. Some condescending remarks about my work or my writing or my professional reputation. Over time, that developed into plain insults, combined with accusations of cheating, irrational jealousy, and constant arguments. He made a habit of pointing out everything I did wrong (and I was always doing something wrong.) He told me that my friends were conspiring against me and I should cut them out of my life. He read my emails and went through my things. He joined forums to follow my online interactions. He forbade me from talking to some of my male friends. He ranted and raved and screamed until I learned not to complain about anything. He told me I was paranoid. He told me I was stupid. He told me I was inappropriate. He told me I was a slut. He yelled at me when I cried. He said he wanted to punch me in the face. He threatened to kill my family.

And he cheated. Oh yes, he cheated, a thousand times. And for an obscene period of time, he had two serious girlfriends concurrently.

“Why did you keep going back to him?” is the question everyone asks.

Quite simply, I was terrified of not having him because he had rebuilt every aspect of my life to revolve around him. There was just nothing left. I had alienated most of my friends, and my relationship with my parents had become strained because I was so agitated all the time or trying to hide the fact that I was fucked up. My work, my music, my writing, my social life, and everything else I enjoyed had somehow come to involve him to such a degree that I couldn’t do any of those things without him. He made my life miserable, but I needed him desperately because I had come to depend on him for almost everything. I had no coping skills left and having someone else control my life was somehow comforting, even if they were the one who made the mess in the first place. He would regularly orchestrate situations that he knew would devastate me, then swoop in at the last minute to fix things as I floundered. Eventually, he was all I had.

I suffered most of this in silence. I never really told anyone what was happening, because I knew what their answer would be, and I knew I couldn’t leave him. Plus, I was just plain embarrassed. There was simply no point in having that discussion.

But of course, it ended eventually. I uncovered a series of transgressions so major that even I couldn’t talk myself into believing his bullshit anymore. I arranged a meeting, and then I threw myself at him, kicking and screaming, hitting and biting. He didn’t feel it, but he left me alone after that.

Once the adrenaline of that final episode wore off, I fell into a bit of a slump. I was still reeling from everything that had happened, but everyone had already heard the story and was bored with it. I looked okay, so everyone assumed I was. My job kept me busy and functional during the day, but most nights I drank until I passed out. I felt completely traumatised. I’d always known my relationship contained some untruth, but discovering the scale of the lies was devastating. It felt like an episode of Scooby Doo, when the villain peels back his mask and you realise you had completely mistaken his identity altogether. I agonised over how I was supposed to prevent a situation like that from developing again, when I wasn’t really sure how I’d let it happen in the first place. And at the end of the day, I was simply floored by the fact that a human being could be so completely, purely, remorselessly awful. So I drank until I couldn’t maintain a string of logic, I turned off my phone, and I didn’t leave my house unless I absolutely had to. I simply needed to sit, alone, and try to remember who I was. Gradually the shock wore off and I remembered how to be a normal person, but the anger never really faded. I realised that up until that point in my life, I’d never actually hated anyone. I say that I hate things or people all the time, but this was red-hot and bigger than me. I was afraid it would make me do something terrible. I’m still afraid of that.

I think about him less now, but when I do, it’s always in fantasy: I see him drunk, stumbling around the city one night. He trips and staggers in front of a bus. It crushes him instantly. His body breaks and he’s thrown to the side of the road. He lies there, a tangle of gore and smashed limbs. He can’t speak, but he can hear. And he needs an ambulance, fast. I walk over, kneel next to him, and look into his eyes. “You worthless fuck,” I say and spit in his face, then walk away.

I live with two boys. They can be quite offensive.

Him: You smell nice.
Me: Thanks!
Him: Yeah… you smell like.. what’s that stuff that you can spray in the toilet after you take a shit?
Me: This is my favourite perfume.
Him: Yeah, like toilet cleaner.

Him: You don’t want there to be any sexual tension amongst housemates. You just don’t want that drama. You should live with people you’re not at all attracted to.
Me: Yeah, totally.
Him: Well that’s the main reason I moved in with you, anyway.

Him: Oh sorry, I should have told you I’d be having friends over.
Me: Why do I need to know that?
Him: Because then you could have put on nicer clothes.

Mum’s friend: I hate to say it, but your cat’s getting a little chunky.

Me: So’s your face.

Mum: Will you be home for dinner?

Me: Not if you’re cooking.

Mum: You’re being really obnoxious right now.

Me: So’s your face.

Mum: We had this terrible incident at the hospital a few years ago… A woman who worked there part-time was going around stealing all the nurses’ purses and-

Me: Wait, hang on, the nurses’ purses?

Mum: Yeah, so?

Me: NURSES’ PURSES? That’s hilarious! It sounds like a shitty crime novel. Like, Nancy Drew and the Troubling Case of the Missing Nurses’ Purses. Haha!

Mum’s friend: So what happened then?

Me: Oh who cares. Let’s open another bottle of wine!

Mum: Can you open the champagne, darling?

Dad: The Chandon?

Mum: No, the Veuve. I told you to bring the Veuve!

Dad: Well I just grabbed whatever was in the fridge.

Mum: The fridge in the kitchen?

Dad: No, the fridge in the garage.

Mum: Why would you do that?

Dad: You just said ‘get the champagne from the fridge’. If you meant a specific champagne from a particular fridge, you should have said so.

Me: Yeah, Mum. The guy’s a GP, not an oracle.

Mum: I just don’t understand why you never listen to me properly. If you were unsure, you should have asked.

Me: Yeah, Dad. You went to medical school for six years but you can’t even figure out what champagne to bring to Christmas lunch?

Dad: I have worked my arse off so that you people can have champagne in the first place, and then this is how you treat me?

Me: Yeah, Mum!

Mum: Oh, right, because birthing your children and raising them into semi-respectable adults was just one big goddamn holiday for me.

Me: Yeah, Dad! Wait…what do you mean by semi?

Dad: Annik, please tell your mother that if anybody needs me, I’ll be in my study.

Arsehole: Why won’t you go out with me?

Me: You’re coming on a little too strong.

Arsehole: What do you mean?

Me: Well.. it’s like when a cat is trying to sneak up on a bird. If the cat runs up to the bird, making lots of noise and sudden movements, then the bird will get scared and fly away before the cat makes it within a five metre radius. But if the cat moves towards the bird slowly and quietly, one step at a time, eventually it might be able to sit right next to the bird.

Arsehole: I don’t understand.

Me: I’m the bird.

Arsehole: Do you have any hot friends?

Man: Based on a scale of one to ten where ten is ’strongly agree’ and one is ’strongly disagree’ please indicate how much you agree with the following statements.

Me: Wait, which one means agree?

Man: Ten.

Me: Okay.

Man: The bank’s customer care line staff member was able to resolve your request in a timely manner?

Me: Um.. agree. Which one is agree?

Man: Ten.

Me: Yeah.

Man: So on a scale of one to ten, how much do you agree with that statement?

Me: Ten.

Man: And was the staff member able to offer you suitable advice?

Me: I don’t really think that’s applicable. I was just re-ordering a deposit book.

Man: Okay. And did you feel the staff member was able to tailor the conversation based on your banking history?

Me: I don’t know. How does that apply here? Seven?

Man: Were you satisfied that your request was resolved completely by the end of the call?

Me: Yes.

Man: On a scale of one to ten?

Me: One.

Man: One means disagree.

Me: Oh.. then ten.

Man: Okay, and overall, how would you rate your entire experience with the bank’s customer care line?

Me: Nine.

Man: Can you please provide three reasons as to why you have given us that score.

Me: What?

Man: You only gave it a nine, so I need to know why you didn’t say ten.

Me: Dude, I’m really hungover. I’m trying to eat breakfast here.

Man: I still need an answer.

Me: Fine then, change it to ten.

Man: What?

Me: Change my score to ten.

Man: …are you sure?

Me: Yes, I don’t want to talk to you anymore.

Man: Okay… Well, thank you for participating in the survey. If you’d like more information about any of this–

Me: I don’t.

Man: Very well. Enjoy your day.